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The most recent candidate under the DNC banner is Lincoln Chafee who interestingly, besides being the lone Republican (he switched parties) to vote against the Iraq war, is vehemently pro-metric system. I remember when I was a kid, the freeway signs for distance and speed were printed in both English and metric. Converting all those signs from miles to km (again) would cost money, but then, using the English measurement system costs money too, forever -- according to a random guy I googled up without putting any real effort into it because I'm not that interested in proving myself wrong (Paul Naughtin), somewhere between six billion and a trillion. There are without a doubt, critics who might call that somewhat of a wide margin but as one witty commenter noted: "It is probably impossible to give an upper bound on that, however I can give you a lower bound: 500 Million Dollars for the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter by NASA".
Now, I'm neither a firm GOP nor DNC voter... but I'm tempted.
takyon: Former Governor of Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee joins a number of other candidates seeking a 2016 U.S. presidential nomination.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2015, @04:38PM
No, they must deliver a product that meets the Chinese ICD. That is the sole reason you have ICDs in the first place. If the ICD says they need to attach to a mount plate using M6 screws, then that is what the German device will use to attach. If the German unit doesn't function, I don't want the Chinese opening it up trying to fix it regardless of what wrenches they want to use. Or, if they want to fix it, as per the repair documentation delivered by the Germans, then yes, they will have to use the proper tools to fix it and not try to unfasten the Philips screws with a flat head screw driver.
There are many parts of an automobile engine that you need a specialized tool to operate. You purchase it because you aren't the one who is going to do that fix. The NASA mission engineer damn well better not be the one opening up instrument packages.
This is how you build big, complex systems like this. You define the interface points between sections and you nail down what the interfaces are, how things attach, what flows back and forth, what protocols are used, etc., etc. Then you make sure things adhere to the ICD and work together. Clearly, with the MCO, they fucked up the interface somewhere. It is the same thing if the software screen reported a pressure in kiloPascals but the code didn't convert it from the Pascals it uses (or, more likely, it converted incorrectly from unitless digital numbers out of an ADC to whatever units they want on the control screen). Micromanaging the instrument experts from upper management is a recipe for disaster, or at least a recipe for always being way behind schedule and grossly over budget.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Saturday June 06 2015, @05:43PM
Some of that size and complexity appears needless if you have to apply conversions at each intersection point. The software should be calculating and sampling in metric if the output is metric. However it could be sampling in imperial and translating to metric, like you are saying. But one method is more failure prone than the other. Could and Should are different.
Forcing everyone to use metric is not even close to micromanagement. If my team wanted to control the power management system with javascript that would probably be seen as a bad idea, even if the interfaces adhered to the standard.
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(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Saturday June 06 2015, @05:55PM
Forcing everyone to use metric is not even close to micromanagement.
True. Top down universal mandates, disregarding the consequences, are a different sort of mismanagement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2015, @09:04PM
Yes! Rage, rage against the powers that be that are stuffing decimal-based measuring systems down our throats of FREEdom!! Every sovereign citizen is entitled to whatever systems of weight and measures they want to implement. And just because what I call a pound is only equivalent to 394 grams, no body has any reason to complain, since they did not ask for the conversion chart for my pound. Suckers! Moron Libra!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 07 2015, @03:04AM
(Score: 2) by tibman on Saturday June 06 2015, @10:41PM
Hah! What exactly are the (bad) consequences of making a "universal mandate" that a spaceship must be all metric and not mix in imperial parts or measurements. Because we already know the bad consequences of not doing so.
This kind of mandate is as bad as requiring that all technicians account for their tools at the end of the day. It is an extremely wide policy but shouldn't have been necessary if people didn't make mistakes. People do make mistakes.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 07 2015, @03:02AM
What exactly are the (bad) consequences of making a "universal mandate" that a spaceship must be all metric and not mix in imperial parts or measurements.
Higher costs and more mistakes of course. What makes you think the mandate didn't already exist in the first place? Just because you have a mandate doesn't mean it gets honored. And what sort of effort are you going to go through to make sure that imperial tools don't taint your spacecraft as opposed to all the other mistakes that can happen?
This kind of mandate is as bad as requiring that all technicians account for their tools at the end of the day. It is an extremely wide policy but shouldn't have been necessary if people didn't make mistakes. People do make mistakes.
Which is another top down policy that I can see management screwing up. I really don't see the point of your post.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:34PM
You are inventing stuff. Metric is now higher cost and more mistake prone than mixing imperial and metric? Just go away.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 08 2015, @03:11AM
But I think the whole argument is absurd in the first place. "We must go metric because of a 15 year old accident with a spacecraft". You should have a better argument than that for a switch.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday June 08 2015, @04:36AM
I do agree that it is a bad argument to use when switching civilian stuff over to metric.
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